The 2018 Halloween reboot tapped into horror fans’ ravenous nostalgia for the original 1978 film while delivering a strong storyline that gave the franchise a credible place in today’s world. That film’s unadorned visual style made the scares more convincing and effective while interestingly exploring the traumatic impact of knife-wielding murderer Michael Myers on heroine Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).
Read moreWith a string of successful and critically acclaimed films such as The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, David O Russell was poised to become one of the defining film makers of the 2010’s. But after 2015’s Joy, he seemed to disappear from our screens and became the subject of reports of controversial on-set incidents. One of those confrontations
Read moreGiven its intriguing premise and the quality of production director Olivia Wilde brings to the film, it’s unfortunate that the ambitious psychological thriller Don’t Worry Darling doesn’t quite deliver on its promise as a mystery thriller or as social commentary. Set in the 1950’s, the film sees young married couple Alice (Florence Pugh) and Jack (Harry Styles) living in the
Read moreMacedonian-Australian writer/ director Goran Stolevski’s creepy, impressionistic and at times very unsettling, You Won’t Be Alone, mixes a grittily realistic depiction of early 19th Century European provincial life with supernatural horror. The film plays a little like a sinister fairy-tale with elements of Robert Eggers’ The Witch, the ‘wild girl from the forest’ sub-genre, Candide/Bad Boy Bubby-like tales of an
Read moreThe grim family drama, The Humans offers some affecting insights into the human condition but in its attempt to capture the messiness of families, it feels more like a collection of idea fragments than a coherent story. The film sees the Blake family, father Erik (Richard Jenkins), mother Deidre (Jayne Houdyshell), Erik’s wheelchair-bound mother, Momo (June Squibb) who is suffering
Read moreSome might have deduced from the movie poster – which features individual shots of the large, sharply dressed ensemble cast – that quirky murder mystery comedy, See How They Run is a homage to Agatha Christie’s whodunnits. This very likeable, if slightly tepid film is actually based around Christie’s phenomenally long-running play The Mousetrap. Set in London in 1953, the
Read more